The weather was really nice Monday evening, so Charmaine and I took our bikes out for a little spin. We did our short route, which takes us up into Alpine, over to the road that goes up to Suncrest, and then back home. It’s only 16 miles with very little climbing, but it’s really fun. I always ride with my phone, so I decided to try RunKeeper on the ride. I don’t listen to music while I ride, and I didn’t want the phone telling me I was on or off pace every five minutes, so I disabled the audio cues. Charmaine has a Garmin 705, but I just have a simple bike computer, so I thought it would be cool to have additional data. It was cool. I’ll definitely do that again.
Today I got all excited, thinking I was somehow way ahead of my pace when I made it all the way to the park at the center of The Cedars without hearing the voice tell me how far ahead or behind I was. Soon it was obvious that I had no idea if I was on pace or not. The further I got from where I normally hear the audio cue, the more I wondered what was wrong. Eventually I remembered that I had disabled the audio cues for biking. I wish I could set it differently for different sports. Knowing that I had no idea if I was ahead or behind was a little discouraging. I remembered thinking how much time I cut off the first time I used RunKeeper with the audio cues. I figured I better just push myself hard and see what happens.
I knew I wanted to improve my pace going up the big hill right after the 2 mile mark, so I focused on that. I think I did alright, but I was still dead by the time I hit the top. I pushed myself through mile 3, but I was obviously off my pace by quite a bit. I finished the activity and wrote some notes on my phone before I had any clue how I had done. I actually thought I had done much better than I had, which you can tell from my notes.
I guess those audio cues make a bigger difference than I thought. I’m turning them back on right now.